It was an odd thing to say. If she’d been about to drain the last of her beer and head off, he wouldn’t have paid it any attention. There was something in her voice, a wistful quality with a hint of apprehension behind it, that suggested she wasn’t talking about an apartment a couple of blocks away. She meant home as in where you’re from. Perhaps where you haven’t been for a long time.
He’d have asked her where home was, maybe he’d been there, if that hadn’t been when the door opened.
Two pairs of eyes flicked immediately to the mirror. It wasn’t Guillory. It was a man. He exuded menace and threat and harm from every pore, the sort of man whose eyes you don’t catch if you like the current configuration of your face and limbs and want to keep them that way. Evan smelled the threat of violence coming off him from across the room.
The guy looked around. His gaze settled on another man sitting at a table near the door—the table that Kieran had tried to direct Evan’s new friend Bella towards. He yelled something unintelligible at the seated man, took a fast step towards him. Seemed the man at the table had been expecting something like it to happen. He didn’t look up with a surprised expression on his face at the unexpected interruption as you’d expect. He was already getting to his feet to meet the attack head on.
Everybody turned towards the two men, an indignant shout from Kieran behind the bar ringing out. The first guy threw a wild punch, caught the second guy a glancing blow on the side of the head.
Then the door opened a second time and Guillory stepped inside, not more than a couple feet away from the flailing arms of the two men. She leaned away as a fist cut through the air in front of her nose, then reacted instinctively, stepping between them.
‘Hey! Break it up.’
Evan spun around on his stool, came off it quicker than if he’d been told it was free beer next door but only for the next two minutes. Concentrating on the melee on the other side of the room, a confusion of grunts and flying fists and frayed tempers, not paying attention to immediately behind him. He bounced into a guy coming towards him as all other eyes were on the scuffle by the door. They cracked heads, a bone-jarring collision, eyes going in and out of focus. Evan flew backwards into the bar, the other guy wavering in front of him.
Then something hit the bar’s wooden floor with a metallic boing and quivered. They both looked down at the switchblade the guy had dropped, its pointed tip embedded in the floor, the light catching its shuddering six-inch blade.
The guy hesitated momentarily. Then went for it before Evan had a chance to react. He scooped it up, closed it, dropped it in his pocket. A well-practiced maneuver that nobody else in the bar would have noticed even if they hadn’t been concentrating on the fight by the door. He might have been bending to scratch an itch on his ankle. He showed Evan his palms as if in apology, then shoved hard into Evan’s chest with the heels of both hands. Evan stumbled backwards into the stool again as the guy turned and ran. He pushed himself upright, yelled across the room.
‘Kate! Stop that guy.’
Guillory was in the middle of the two men fighting, trying to keep them apart. She looked up at the unexpected sound of her name, lost concentration for a split second. The guy who’d been sitting at the table punched her in the side of the head, shoved her into the table he’d been sitting at. Then the two men dived for the door, the animosity between them a thing of the past. Evan’s eyesight was still hazy but he’d have sworn they held the door for the man who’d dropped the knife. Then they were gone, the door slamming behind them.
He shook his head to clear it, charged across the room to follow Guillory out into the street. She was standing on the sidewalk, phone out, arm extended, trying to get a shot of the license plate of a car burning rubber all the way down the street. She gave up, her hands shaking from the adrenal letdown. Staring after the car’s disappearing lights, chest heaving, massaging the side of her face. She noticed him beside her, glared at him instead.
‘Thanks a lot, Buckley.’
‘You want me to kiss it better?’
Sorry might have been preferable, but hey-ho. She ignored him anyway, a frown creasing her forehead.
‘There’s something strange going on. They all got into the same car.’
It wasn’t the time to point out that saving gas helps the planet.
He steered her back inside, felt his heart lurch as he remembered Bella sitting on her stool.
Except she wasn’t. She was gone. His first reaction—thank God for small mercies—was immediately overshadowed by the fact that Guillory was right. Something was off.
‘Why did you want me to stop him?’ she said, still rubbing her cheek. ‘I’m going to have a hell of a bruise.’
‘He had a switchblade—’
‘And you wanted me to stop him? I’m lucky I’ve only got a cracked cheekbone.’
He ignored the exaggeration, patted the air to quiet her down.
‘It was back in his pocket by then.’
Her eyes narrowed.
‘Are you sure you saw it? Didn’t imagine it? How many beers have you had?’
He knelt down where the guy had dropped the knife to see if he could find where the blade had stuck in the floor. She suddenly smiled, something he thought she’d forgotten how to do.
‘Not here, Evan. It’s embarrassing.’
Then Kieran leaned over the bar, a grin to match Guillory’s on his face.
‘What are you doing down there, Evan? Got a big announcement for us? I’ll get the champagne on ice.’
He tuned them out, concentrated on the floor. It was no good. There were too many scrapes
